New Beverage Showdown 23 - Finals: RUUTS

Speaker 1 [00:14] It's time to hear from our first finalist for this round, that is Alex Malin, who is the co-creator of RUUTS. Come on up, Alex. I apologize, we have 2 presenters here. And we have 2 microphones. Here's 1. There you go. Please keep an eye on your timer.

Speaker 2 [00:42] Hey everyone, we're the creators behind RUUTS. RUUTS is a mood boosting, stress reducing, sugar-free iced tea infused with adaptogens designed for creatives. We started RUUTS back in college when our friends just seemed to be down. We felt the weight of too much work, anxiety, stress, procrastination, breakups, brain fog, and were just uninspired. Mental health has become a salient issue among our generation, and it is the responsibility of companies to create brands and products that support and inspire their customers. Despite the recent innovations in the beverage world, mental health as a functional category and iced tea as a product category have yet to be disrupted. So, we wondered, can we create a beverage with real functional effects while still tasting delicious? And that's when we discovered Ashwagandha. Ashwagandha is a root, hence the name Roots, that comes from India and naturally reduces the cortisol in our body. These are the hormones that regulate the stress levels that we feel physically and mentally. Ashwaganddaha helps to reduce stress, anxiety, promotes endurance, hair growth, wellness, and improved sleep. So we went to Whole Foods to try some ashwagandha, and all the products were in the form of unbranded tinctures and supplement pills. That's when we knew there was a white space in the market with massive tailwinds. Calming beverages are estimated to reach a market size of $11 billion and iced tea is estimated to be an $8 billion market opportunity. We know that the functional beverage market is already huge and growing rapidly, set to reach $250 billion in 2030.

Speaker 3 [02:24] Enter Roots, the first iced tea inspired by feeling good and designed to be mood boosting and absolutely delicious. Unlike legacy tea brands, Roots is entirely sugar free. It ranges between 0 and 10 calories, and it's brewed with organic and handpicked ingredients. And even when stacked compared to other functional. Other functional beverage brands and mood enhancing beverage brands were lower in sugars, calories, higher in function, and competitively priced. We use a full dose of KSM 66 Ashwagandha using a 350 mg serving to really enhance the full feeling and effect we're trying to get from Ashwagandha. It was really important for us to focus on the original flavors that we core flavors we we grew up drinking, which is why we focused on really giving our roots upgrade to our sweet mint green tea and our peach dragon fruit green tea, and we're really excited to be rolling out our lemon green tea later this summer as requested by our community. When we launched Roots, we wanted to see if we can organically gain traction without the guise of marketing, a sales team, or even a DSD push. And you know, without really realizing it, we sold through our entire production run much sooner than expected, and we gained distribution in key retailers such as Airwan, Foxtrot, Juice Press, Equinox, and Urban Outfitters and now have a footing in New York, Chicago, DC, SoCal, and we're soon to roll out in Texas as well. Through our core retailers that we experimented with, we achieved around a an average velocity of a case per skew per store per week, and in one cafe in SoHo alone, we're moving 60 bottles a week. Based on this data, we believe we found product market fit, and we plan on expanding both our retail and marketing efforts. We're building a community centered around Gen Z and millennials, and we plan to insert ourselves based on where our target customer builds their habits. We know where they like to eat and play, and we have a lot of core channels core retailers coming out soon. Unfortunately we just can't name any names yet, but we're very excited to release some news in the near future. Generally speaking, the mission of Roots is to really promote mental health beyond our, beyond our bottle, and we're building a portfolio of creatives, artists, designers, musicians, and like I said, all creatives alike to help really build a community centered around creativity to help inspire the world around us. And in case you think our packaging might be too focused on Gen Z and millennials, just look at Alison's dad. As he sur surprised as you see the creativity being pulled out of him or maybe he's just slightly confused by our by our labels, but based on the guise of yesterday's response and feedback, we're already improving our labels to be more focused and directed on what exactly we're we're putting in our liquid. Thank you guys for listening and we're RUUTS, and we're here to help you find your roots.

Speaker 1 [05:18] Well done. If I, you guys can stick on stage actually for a sec because the judges may have some questions for you. There you go. Uh, Mike, we heard a lot about, uh, the importance of mental health, uh, as it relates to this brand. Um, at the end of the day, taste is really important for any brand. How did this product taste? I think it's a good, it's, it's definitely a tea product, um, and it, it's good tasting tea. But I don't know if it's, if everybody wants like a, a bitter tea when they drink a tea. I think they think it, it, I think there's an expectation, some expectation of sweet, which would make it a bit more mainstream. Um, as far as the branding goes, I think there's a nice organic look and feel here, and, but the problem with Roots and you being on brand Roots wise is I think more people buy flowers, so. Uh, putting some of this, the creativity behind your brand front of pack is gonna be key here. Bonnie, um, a lot of interest, uh, around Ashwagandha, um, and it seems like Ashwagandha is a key attribute of this brand for sure. Um, does it speak to that Gen Z millennial, uh, community like Roots is targeting?

Speaker 4 [06:30] Yeah, I think it does. Um, I think people are researching and looking for, uh, ways to not use medicine and use plants as, as their medicine. So I think you guys have targeted that really well. One thing that I would advise is some people don't know what ashwagandha is. You guys write what your beverage does on the side of your packaging. I think maybe if you were to put some of that more forward, you might have a better pull strategy off

Speaker 3 [06:57] shelf. Thank you.

Speaker 1 [06:59] Matt, scalability is of course important. Uh, we saw Snapple, we saw Honest Tea, uh, in some of the slides as well. I mean, do you think that Roots has the potential to be as big as those brands one day?

Speaker 5 [07:08] Yeah, I think that's a, it's a great question. Um, based on where you are today, it, it feels like this is very much a specialty food retail, natural food retail, which great place to play. The question for me would be in current, the current way you go to market, the current look and feel, taste. Is it destined to stay there, or could this, you know, scale up to traditional mainstream mass club, etc. over time? I, I, I don't know the answer yet, but in what I couldn't, it was too small for me to see that the retail price point you're targeting is what right now

Speaker 3 [07:41] it's 3999 and we plan on lowering that in the near future.

Speaker 1 [07:46] And Danielle, there seems to be a feeling about this brand um, does the brand to you speak what we heard, uh, on stage today?

Speaker 6 [07:55] Um, wow, I think I'm gonna echo some of the other comments in that you, you have created, uh, an emotional, uh, sense in the, in the visual identity, but the actual value proposition and the benefit doesn't come across. So I too would move some of that information to the front, and you, uh, had already said you were working on that, but I also, I just wanna say that on the taste front. I actually found it to be a very uh subtle flavor and very sweet, so I would have liked to have experienced a little more of the tea flavor.

Speaker 1 [08:29] All right, great feedback. I, I have one more thing to add, I'm sorry. I have a question to ask here. Um, how do you plan to sell an iced tea when the only call out is the lick that it's iced tea is the color of the liquid?

Speaker 3 [08:39] So you did put iced tea on the front of the label for the new design. Great.

Speaker 1 [08:46] Good answer. All right. Thank you so much, well done. Thank you.